As a visual artist and musician, the arts have been, for me, the main forum for the working through of such questions as faith, identity, spirituality, worship, poverty, justice, community, healing and aesthetics. The church, and the folks of whom it is comprised, is a mystery, a conundrum. Where else would such a disparate group of people – often individuals who would likely have little or nothing to do with each other in any other context – come together and seek to not just stay together but to love one another and attempt to manifest God’s love to the world around them. The choice of materials for the Hope of Glory series serves as a metaphor: the clay is pieced together and often cracked or broken during the firing (adding, I think, to it’s interest and beauty). The rusty metal and screws or bolts are cast off fragments that catch my eye as I walk or cycle around the city. We are the church – broken, yet beautiful: temporal, yet the reflection of a timeless God: consisting of the merely human, yet inspired and enlivened by a divine Spirit. Though generally well meaning, we are such a conflicted and bumbling – and frequently misguided – lot. In the end it is only by the mystery of Christ in us that there is any hope of Glory.